Blog

  • Uprisings: Online Resouces

    With protests continuing, here is a partial list of online resources: For Libya: #Feb17; CNN’s Ben Wedeman; @EnoughGaddafi; For Bahrain: #Feb14, @OnlineBahrain; For Yemen: #Feb3; @JNovak_Yemen; Palestinian: #Mar15 Gulf: @dr_davidson, @tobycraigjones For Saudi Arabia: on Twitter: #Mar11; Webpages and blogs: rasid.com, ysoof.com/blog/?p=242, saudiwoman.wordpress.com, alasmari.wordpress.com, saudijeans.org To translate: translate.google.com Based in the U.S., but with extensive contacts…

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  • “A New Bipartisan Consensus Against Low Income People”

    The president’s budget is a prosaic austerity plan that inflicts disproportionate pain on low income Americans. Fundamental questions about the costs of war and the fairness of tax cuts for the rich have been avoided by the decision to narrowly target non-security “discretionary” spending to bear the weight of deficit reduction. It used to be…

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  • Challenges for Change in Algeria

    Tunisia and Egypt are relatively centralized states, Algeria not so, neither politically, nor culturally, nor geographically. Historically, the interior has been difficult to control, and there is no guarantee that the rest of the country would rally to the protests taking place in the capital as in the case of Egypt. The Algerian regime is…

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  • “Mubarak has fallen. The regime didn’t”

    CAIRO — Mubarak has fallen. The regime didn’t. We still have the same cabinet appointed by [Mubarak]. The emergency state is still enforced. Old detainees are still in detentions and new ones since the 25th of January remain missing. There is no public apology for the killing. We hear several executives are being prosecuted, including…

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  • Time to forge new, democratic system

    CAIRO — Last night, February 11, Cairo was the scene of what may well have been the largest street party in world history.  It was incredibly powerful and moving.  Of course, the night’s festivities marked both an end and a beginning. Now is the time for Egypt’s judges, other legal professionals, diplomats, other negotiators, intellectuals,…

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  • Our Man in Cairo

    With Mubarak’s departure, the focus now falls on his chosen successor, Omar Suleiman. According to a classified American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Suleiman was Israel’s pick to succeed Mubarak. But there’s little doubt that he was also the choice of the United States, or at least of one particular American agency with which he…

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  • Online Resources on Egypt and Beyond

    With protests against the Egyptian regime continuing, here is a partial list of resources: A critical Facebook page is “We are all Khaled Said” — also see the associated webpage elshaheeed.co.uk. (For background on Khaled Said, see IPA news release.) See: egyprotest-defense.blogspot.com; live updates at guardian.co.uk; Al-Jazeera English live blog and video, or via YouTube:…

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  • Hungry Gazans Feed Egyptian Troops

    RAFAH, Feb 9, 2011 (IPS) – Mustapha Suleiman, 27, from J Block east of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, crosses through gaps in the iron fence on the border carrying bread, water, meat cans and a handful of vegetables for Egyptian soldiers stationed on the other side. [See at Inter Press Service]

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  • Egypt’s military-industrial complex

    With US-made tear gas canisters fired on protesters in Cairo, Washington’s role in arming Egypt is under the spotlight In early January 2010, Bob Livingston, a former chairman of the appropriations committee in the US House of Representatives, flew to Cairo accompanied by William Miner, one of his staff. The two men were granted meetings…

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  • Uprising Pays Off -– Sort of

    Today I went to a town only 23 kilometers south of Tahrir Square. The plan was to see if the 11-day uprising in Egypt has produced any benefits so far – just by way of finding something different from the insecurity and chaos in Cairo. Kirdasa, a small town known for its flower nurseries and…

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  • Confronting Iran

    MUHAMMAD SAHIMI Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. He co-wrote, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, the Los Angeles Times op-ed “Defusing Iran with Democracy.” Sahimi said today: “The only way to have a peaceful resolution of Iran’s nuclear program is through negotiations without any preconditions and/or threats.…

  • Health Care: · Record Uninsured · Latinos · California Battle

    Bloomberg is reporting on new government data showing that “the number of people living in the nation without medical insurance rose 2.9 percent to a record 46.6 million in 2005 as health-care costs climbed.” CLAUDIA FEGAN, MD Co-author of the book Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience, Fegan…

  • Poverty: One Year After Katrina

    ROBERT GREENSTEIN LAWRENCE MISHEL JARED BERNSTEIN Greenstein is executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute and Bernstein is director of the Living Standards Program at EPI. They will hold a joint conference call briefing Tuesday, August 29, at 1:30 p.m. (ET) to provide analysis…

  • One Year After Katrina

    SANGITA NAYAK Nayak is communications director of the Praxis Project, which coordinates the Katrina Information Network, an informational clearinghouse. She can arrange media interviews with grassroots groups and survivors from East Biloxi to New Orleans who can comment on the gaps in the recovery. More Information TRACIE WASHINGTON Washington, a lifelong New Orleans resident and…

  • Will the U.S. Accept Iran Talks Without Preconditions?

    ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN Author of the article “Iran: The Next Target?” and several books including Inventing the Axis of Evil and Iran Between Two Revolutions, Abrahamian said today: “Some seem to want to move to air strikes in the near future as if Iran were on the verge of having a nuclear bomb when the CIA…

  • Behind Bush’s Rhetoric on Iraq: · Democracy · Oil

    RAED JARRAR Jarrar, the Iraq Project director for Global Exchange, is just back from a trip to the Mideast which included meetings with Iraqi Parliament members in Jordan and a visit to Syria. Bush said today at his news conference: “The United States of America must understand it’s in our interests that we help this…

  • Back from Meeting with Iraqi Parliamentarians

    CINDY SHEEHAN Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004 and who inspired Camp Casey, which is currently set up near President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, as it is whenever he is scheduled to be there. Sheehan’s latest piece about her experiences in the Mideast,…

  • Using Terror Scare?

    CRAIG MURRAY Former ambassador from the UK to Uzbekistan, Murray wrote in a recent piece titled “The UK Terror Plot: What’s Really Going On?” that: “None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency…

  • Peace Activists in Lebanon and the U.S.

    ADAM SHAPIRO HUWAIDA ARRAF RASHA SALTI MEDEA BENJAMIN SAMAH IDRISS WADIH AL ASMAR All of these activists are participating in a civilian peace convoy to the south of Lebanon. More information is at Lebanon Solidarity. Arraf and Shapiro are co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement. Shapiro said today: “Israel has in effect depopulated the south…

  • Tenth Anniversary of Welfare Reform

    August 22 marks the tenth anniversary of President Clinton signing into law “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.” GWENDOLYN MINK Co-editor of the two-volume Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics and Policy, Mink said today: “Congress changed the welfare law last February, stepping up federal disciplinary control…

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